


Blow Ye Winds Westerly

by jenesaisquoi



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Post-Series, Sea-longing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 08:59:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11158551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenesaisquoi/pseuds/jenesaisquoi
Summary: On the nights when the ocean winds blow through the plantation, Flint has a hard time letting go of his old life.





	Blow Ye Winds Westerly

**Author's Note:**

> I binged this show over the past few days and just could not get it out of my head that Flint would just settle down and be happy with everything after the show told us over and over about what kind of driven man he is—despite the mostly happy ending and thank goodness for that.
> 
> I suppose it was inevitable that as soon as I heard the sea shanties in Black Flag, I was going to incorporate it into a story. I just love shanties so much. This is the one that appears in this fic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJOovInlk-w

He is happy. He is _so_ happy. He could finally lay Flint to rest, return to the trappings of James McGraw; disgraced naval officer on a foreign plantation. He has spent many a night, blissfully in the company of Thomas, reunited and _happy_. 

And yet.

_Come all you young sailormen, listen to me._

He was still Flint at heart, still as chipped and jagged as a rock’s edge. More often than not, he forgot to respond when Thomas addressed him as James. He tried so hard not to walk like he owned every expanse of ground he crossed. He knew that Silver had seen the change in him, he himself had felt that change, like years and years of toil and sorrow being lifted from his shoulders. There was a small ache that he still carried in his heart for Miranda, cradled and safe. But he was happy. 

And yet. 

On those nights when the winds blew West, bringing with it the particular briny scent of the ocean that he knew so well, would always know so well. On those nights when the storms built and the scents that he could pick out from all others came over the land, he was right back in that storm. That ship killer. 

_Blow ye winds westerly, blow ye winds, blow._

He could feel it during the day. When everyone was slow to toil away and the air hung heavy, like a dense cloud of moisture, he knew what was coming. They all, on some level, knew what was coming. Storms would always have their oppressive nature and even human animals, so far removed in their civilized ways, would feel it in their deepest instincts. Children played little, men dragged their feet, and women stood and tried to breathe in their corsets. Thomas would comment that there would be a storm likely overnight or in the morning at the latest. Thomas would continue to toil away under the oppressive humidity and carry on as any landlocked man.

But Flint, and Flint he was in these moments, he knew better than them what was coming. He _felt_ it in a way that was mirrored within him. The heavy, wet heat of the afternoon before the storm was in his blood. When the winds picked up at night, his blood picked up with it. In the very, very early hours of the morning, he arose and went outside. That moment before the sky lightens, before the dark clouds of the storm can even hope to swallow any light, is when Captain Flint is alive within him. 

Breathing deeply, the winds take away his breath returning them to their rightful place within the ocean winds. He closes his eyes and imagines, just for a moment, for one small instant, that he will be unmade, and like sand in the wind he will be taken back to the sea one day. 

“Why are you out here?” Thomas calls suddenly from behind him. He is standing under the porch roof when Flint looks back. “This isn’t the best time for a walk.” He tries for humour, but Flint can read him.

“It’s a ship killer,” he replies. 

“What?”

“A storm like this. Most likely, at any rate. Out on the waters, it’s what men call a ship killer.”

“You are the Captain here, my dear, but could a storm truly kill a ship? It bends the trees, but this is no hurricane,” Thomas replies. 

“It hasn’t picked up full strength yet,” he explains, louder to be heard over the wind from his position away from the porch. “Out on the water, where there is no land for it to break upon, even what you see tomorrow won’t be near its original strength.”

Thomas edges closer to him, still beneath the roof, and Flint takes a step back to better hear him as the storm continues to build. 

“Have you ever seen a storm like it? A ship killer, when you were—when you were at sea?”

“I sailed into one,” he replies, eyes closed and feeling the wheel in his hands, and the rise of the ship’s prow and its drop over the crest of the wave. 

“You—what on earth for?” Thomas asks.

Flint stands there, for a moment he is silent. The wind lashes around him and the rain begins. He tilts his face to meet its kiss, almost imagines that he can taste the salt it has brought with it from the ocean. He can almost imagine that he stands once again at the helm of his ship, the tail ends of a shanty drifting by him as his crew gets down to work.

_Jolly sou’wester, boys, steady she goes._

“James?” Thomas prompts. 

But it is in the words that are not spoken that Flint hears it, on nights like these especially. He hears it every time in the octaves of Thomas’ voice. _I’ve lost you all over again_ , the silences say to him. He wants to respond, wants to reassure him that he moved the seas to his will before and would do it again if the day ever came that Thomas was no longer at his side.

That’s just it though, he thinks, still unmoving. Thomas left him when he was un-formed, open to the softness and love that Thomas and Miranda showed him. _I return to you a pirate captain_ , he wants to explain because he knows who he is, _what_ he is. Captain Flint was never a man to question this, he was a fully formed pirate captain, with all its trappings, from the beginning. 

_Windy weather boys, stormy weather, boys. When the wind blows we’re all together boys._

“I didn’t have much choice,” Flint replies. “Hornigold had more guns than us, a ship that wasn’t full of more holes than a ship ought to have.”

“Surrender?” Thomas asks quietly. 

“Accepting pardons was never an option.”

_Up jumps the whale, the largest of all. ‘If you want any wind, well, I’ll blow ye a squall!’_

“So you sailed into a ship-killer storm?”

Flint glances back at him and ducks his head, lips twitching up at the corner. 

“She could handle it, the Walrus. What a ship.” He shakes his head and turns around to face Thomas. “Silver thought I was mad. My quartermaster. He once confessed to me that later, when we were in the godforsaken doldrums, half delirious, he thought I had conjured up the storm itself. That my rage for Miranda and the events of Charles Town was what caused the storm.” 

He huffs a laugh and shakes his head again. 

“How did you make it out of the storm?”

“How indeed,” he says, eyes far away. 

_Blow ye winds westerly, blow ye winds, blow._

He can feel Thomas’ unease, see the slight twitch in his cheek to indicate clenched teeth. The storm is intensifying and Flint along with it. Once, he would have seized the opportunity that tiny show of emotion gave. He would have cajoled, threatened, terrified, coaxed any small advantage to move the world to his will. He had put strict limits on his machinations when he had arrived here, but still the instincts whispered. Flint was alive and well within him and may always be so. He knows that when his eyes drift closed and he turns his face to the breeze, Thomas is watching him slip away from him. He can see it in the way he holds himself as if to hold back the sorrow of long years past. _There’s no hiding from me_ , he wants to tell him, Flint’s talent for seizing on any fear he sees rising within him. Thomas will never understand why he keeps his distance, why he does not let him see all of who he is. 

On nights when the winds blow  _southerly, southerly, southerly_ , Flint is there, wrapped around him like an old coat. _Whatever I face, I will conquer_ , it says to him and he hears the echoes of words quietly spoken on nights before battles. _So long as we are of one mind, there is nothing we cannot face_. Words left unspoken by a man who did not remember how to love and one who did not know how to receive it. 

“With skill and knowledge, as with all things,” he answers Thomas, offering him a quick small smile. “To bed, it’s late.”

He leads the way to their respective rooms; not even a reformed plantation on the other side of the world will un-civilize itself for that he thinks ruefully. Nassau was for that. He leans his forehead against Thomas’ and wants to tell him _I’ll never leave you. You’ll never lose me._ But on nights when the ocean winds blow he knows it’s a lie, knows that if Silver hadn’t forced an end to the war he’s not sure he would have been able to stop, even with the knowledge of Thomas alive. 

“Goodnight,” Thomas says and kisses him. For the briefest moment, Flint thinks he hears the storm pause as though by the measure of peace afforded by this simple act he could truly conjure and disperse storms at will. 

“Goodnight,” he replies and enters his room to lie awake until morning. 

The leaves of the palms are ripping off their branches outside, the rain is like tiny daggers, and yet within his room, within his bed more comfortable than any of the last two decades of his godforsaken life, it is still. All too still. And Flint, both he and his fighting, warring, angry inner pirate, cannot rest without the sway and rock of the ocean. Part of him wants to rage that he is not a babe that needs to be rocked to sleep, but another part of him is tired, so tired of feeling diminished. 

He wants to lash out at the plantation owner some days, abuse the other inmates with whom he is locked in here. _I am one of the greatest pirate captains to have ever sailed the high seas!_ He wants to yell at them, with a ferocity only matched by the storm winds. _I sailed into a ship-killer and came out alive, I stared down the guns of the Spanish and the English and made_ them _tremble in fear. I built Nassau through the games I played and I was unmatched. Join me! Join me all, and together we will assemble a fleet the whole world will fear and the Oceans themselves will bless._

He lets out a sigh. He could do it too, that is the infuriating part of all this. He knows that he could have the owner in his hand, could sway the inmates to any cause he so desired. He already sees the way they look at him—from the moment he walked in this place and they learned who he was tongues danced and glances twirled to get only a glimpse of the freedom that exists wrapped in his chest, in his life, in his deeds. They are captivated and terrified of him, though they try to hide it. 

He won’t, of course. That part of his life is over. The people of that world have moved on or died. And though some days the very irony— _poetic justice_ , Silver’s voice whispers to him—that one of the most formidable pirate captains of the New World ends his story in a prison makes him want to slit every single throat in this fucking place, he knows it will not be. He’s come too far and sacrificed too much to lose Thomas again. 

And so every day he unlearns freedom, little by little, shackles himself to earth and mud. Forces his body to rejoice in solid ground and slow, labouring walks. He trains himself to swallow down everything that was _him_ for the past decades of his life, to keep it tucked away beside the memory of Miranda. He has what he has wanted since he left London all those years ago, and how many men can say they should be so fortunate at the end of such a journey as his. 

So he will kiss Thomas like he is his world, he will remember that his name is James, that the world does not move beneath his feet in great majestic swells. The plantation owner is lord here and the other inmates are his brothers, though when did that word ever have meaning for a captain such as he. He _will_ stand with his feet firmly planted in the rich earth of Savannah.

But on nights when the winds blow, the salt in the air will mix with the salt in his tears and he will feel just how truly diminished he is. Longing for his true home, and he would dare any who has tasted the ocean breeze and known that he can follow the winds to whatever corner of the Earth he wished, to not feel the same. 

The outside staff of the plantation sometimes talk of freedom, from England’s tyranny, from their _taxes_ , of a revolution that may come. _I have known freedom_ , he wants to scream at them, _not your false ideals of freedom_. True freedom was his once and now he is in shackles, though they are invisible to those who do not know. 

So he lays in his soft bed that does not move, closes his eyes to the tears that roll down his cheeks and stares out at wide open ocean, standing on the deck of the Walrus, the Ranger to his right, the Revenge to his left, the Colonial Dawn to her rear. Misfits and miscreants, and criminals and loyal brothers all, out to seek their fortune and cement their freedom in the great blue swaths of churning, rolling, swelling waves. And that giant Spanish beast looming along with them. _Lower the topsails,_ he whispers _, there’s a storm coming._

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, pirates didn't actually sing shanties, as they mostly became popular in the 1800s and onwards. Which makes me kind of sad and also it's fanfiction so my pirates sing anachronistic shanties.


End file.
